One of your New Year’s resolutions is to start playing sports, but you can’t find time to practice it every day? Well, you are interested in reading this article. Because, despite the fact that it has always been said that occasional athletes have a higher risk of suffering from injuries to sudden death due to lack of adequate preparation, now we have known, according to a new scientific study, that doing intense physical exercise for one or two days per week – which may well be Saturday and / or Sunday – would help reduce the risk of mortality almost as much as if you had a daily sports routine. Therefore, neither the lazy nor those who, due to their weekday obligations, find it impossible to exercise from Monday to Friday seem to have an excuse.
The research, developed by the University of Loughborough (England), suggests that the intense exercise carried out by the so-called ‘weekend warriors’ (in Spanish, ‘weekend warriors’ because they condense all their sporting activity on Saturday and Sunday) reduces mortality, provided they adhere to the recommended amount of weekly physical activity. In other words, 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of intense exercise –which is when it becomes difficult to talk and do physical activity at the same time–, either in one session or divided into two different sessions.
Therefore, playing sports a day or two a week would reduce the risk of mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer , compared to those individuals who are completely sedentary . In fact, the benefits at this level would be very similar to those of those who follow a daily sports routine.
The research, recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine and led by Dr. Gary O’Donovan, is based on a set of surveys answered by a total of 63,591 adults – English and Scottish – over 40 years of age. collected between 1994 and 2012 and were analyzed in 2016.
The data speaks
According to the study, those who had met the goal of doing physical exercise throughout the week reduced the risk of death by 35% (in the case of deaths from cardiovascular disease, the risk was lowered by 41%; and in cancer, 21%) compared to inactive adults. But what were the figures in those subjects who concentrated their physical activity only on the weekend? These lowered the risk of death by 30% (specifically, that of dying from a cardiovascular problem decreased by 40% and in the case of cancer, by 18%).
“Millions of people enjoy doing sports once or twice a week, but they may be concerned that they are not getting enough exercise. Now we have found a clear benefit in that type of activity. He’s keeping them fit and healthy, ”O’Donovan explains.
In any case, if you are one of those who follow a daily sports routine, continue with it, because it has other benefits that concentrated activity does not have in one or two days – among other things, it helps control diabetes and improves our condition. psychic.
And if you are part of the sedentary group and you are going to encourage yourself now to do this type of intense exercise one or two days a week, it is recommended that, in order to avoid injuries and other more serious ailments, do not you start with too energetic activity. Choose to start, for example, with brisk walks, and then gradually increase the intensity of the exercise. Because, as the author of this study explains, “a person of middle age or older should do moderate exercise for twelve weeks before introducing intense exercise” into their routine.
